The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

Written by Mariana Enriquez
Translated by Megan McDowell

Deliciously bone-chilling stories that infuse ritual magic, teenage obsession and social commentary.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST

A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a rotting baby crawls out of a backyard; a pair of teenage girls take idol worship to another level; an entire neighbourhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror.

The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. 

Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

Read if you: want the literary equivalent of indigestion.